Poems, stories, songs, and films that recount the adventures of Layli and Majnun – that archetypal pair of sundered lovers – are now beyond tally. However, there is little doubt that it is none other than the Persian version penned by Nezami Ganjavi at the end of the twelfth century that decisively transformed the Arabic tale into the classic legend which would subsequently capture and hold the literary imaginations of India, Turkey, and even farther lands for centuries. This paper presents a reading of "Layli o Majnun" which casts the masnavi not as a straightforward recapitulation of a timeworn love story only subject to sufi-allegorical interpretations; on the contrary -- it shows that the poetic voice developed by Nezami for Majnun is aesthetically very different from his own, and that all the plot developments and evolutions of Majnun’s poetic style constitute Nezami’s criticism of Majnun for being a mere mystical party-line poet, whose lofty ambitions ultimately drive him to abstraction. The ideal poet – according to Nezami – would never have torn Layli's name from the scrap of paper in favor of some cloud-high, ineffable abstraction; rather, a truly great poet of individual and idiosyncratic genius would have kept Layli in full poetic view, never losing sight of her herself as the true object of adoration and source of inspiration. The "toronj" description of Layli in one of the early chapters – the first instance of Nezami throwing down the gauntlet with his own poetic style – would be an example of such an internal agon. In this battle of styles and voices, Nezami places far greater poetic value upon the particular qualities of an individual, whereas Majnun – and countless other mystical poets of Nezami's time – would rather idealize the sufi ablation of individual characteristics by divine unity (tauhid). The aim of this paper is to suggest an alternative reading of Nezami’s "Layli o Majnun" that goes beyond more familiar sufi interpretations by untangling the distinct and poetic voices of Nezami and Majnun, thereby also illuminating a vital aspect of Nezami’s broader aesthetic stance.